I just read a marketing tip delivered by a Mercant Circle writer on marketing tips and I had to make a comment on it. 

In the piece, this writer suggests that when printing a mailing piece, maximize your printing expense by ordering as many copies as your budget can afford because your cost per printed piece goes down with quantity. 

My repsonse to that is WRONG!  This is VERY important.  It’s true that your cost per printed piece goes down drastically with volume.  For example, it may cost $300 to have 2500 printed pieces and only $75 more for 5000 pieces BUT if you’re mailing list is only 2000 addresses, THAT’S ALL YOU NEED! 

Lets say your mailing is a smashing success.  Here are a few scenarios:

1. you’ll be very busy from the influx of business and pleased with the results. Perhaps too busy to even worry about wishing you had sent out to a bigger list.

2. you’ll be very busy but able to send out to a bigger list because you have the capacity to deliver whatever it is that you do or sell so instead of worrying that each mail piece costed you 10 cents more than it could have, you go buy a bigger list and get a bigger quantity of your mail piece printed.

3. you get a new idea and change your offer and you’re GLAD you didn’t get extra copies made because they would have become obsolete.

4. the mailing was a bust and you sure are glad you didn’t buy that extra $75 worth of printed material or worse, the postage to send it all.

You see, direct mail can be a beautiful thing because very often a small test will give you the feedback to know with a certain measure of certainty that a larger roll-out will deliver similar results.  In that, the smaller order that costed you a little extra is a precautionary and very cheap insurance policy. 

Unused printed material is an ultimate waste of money. 

For more good marketing tips using direct mail, feel free to contact me directly at maze@moderncoupon.com

Tags: direct mail marketing